A Shallow End
by HalfPaintedRose
Summary: Paulina is a masterful liar, a skill she's using as best she can to protect both her secretly gay boyfriend and herself. But while Paulina can empathize with his plight, being a lesbian herself, she doesn't hold out the same hope he does that things will get better once they get out of high school. Rated for suicidal ideation throughout.


**Author's Notes:** Written for a tumblr challenge where the prompt was 'lesbian Paulina covers for gay Dash'. No, I don't know why or how I made it this depressing. I do mildly regret that my first piece for this fandom is such a downer, though, and I hope no one minds the use of present tense here given it's an unpopular stylistic choice. I tried my best to pull it off at least competently. As always, feedback, criticism, ideas, suggestions and the like are all welcome.

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Paulina does love Dash, and she will protect him no matter what she has to do.

She has sharp eyes, well hidden behind eyeliner and eye shadow that always match her outfits, has good ears for intonation that these days people only notice because of her impressive collection of earrings. Her manicured hands are steady enough to catch the tension in Dash's when people say certain things. He is not safe. None of them are. People like to say they are, because this is America, this is the land of the free, this is the land of opportunity. Only Paulina knows there's an asterisk next to those statements that exclude certain people, whether it's for race, for gender, or for orientation. But her new red lipstick is applied like a calculated weapon and draws eyes to her when she speaks, and oh, she can speak, she's fluent in three languages, she's smarter than she'll let anyone realize; they never keep their eyes on Dash for long when she's there, because she won't let them.

He knows she knows, they had that conversation in eighth grade after his father gave him a black eye for coming out. That was when she first wanted to use her perfect nails to rip skin from flesh, her gemstone rings to draw blood from a face as she slapped it, wanted to demand from Mr. Baxter what in the _hell_ he thought gave him the right to beat up his only child. Paulina pressed ice to Dash's eye and smoothed back a strand of blonde hair as she tried not to cry since even now, quite frankly, she can't do anything to keep him safe from his father, can't make that awful man pay. What she could do was offer up her services as the ultimate deflection: a fake girlfriend that any football player is, according to common culture, supposed to have. A cheerleader one with an eye for fashion, an obsession with magazines and trends, one whose circle of friends includes jocks and cheerleaders and the uppercrust – that's a disguise better than any he might have been able to come up with on his own.

A football player boyfriend is also very good camouflage for her, as she pines for the beautiful women in those magazines, as she stares at Valerie's gorgeous hair and the way the sun makes her skin look golden-tinged and glorious and forever out of reach.

The only one who knows is Dash, who isn't as good at playing at being 'normal' as she is. She hides herself from her family, knows they'll hate her and tear her down if they ever find out, knows that the only way to survive is to lie. Dash thinks he'll get out of high school then come out in college. Paulina knows the world isn't that kind to people like them, says to him she plans on going to an engineering college across the country even as she secretly sneaks pills into a chest under her bed. Even as she spreads rumors to her friends about her non-existent sex life, even as rumors circulate Dash is cheating on her with another girl and she helps shield him by naming likely suspects to keep the word 'girl' center and front in all conversations, she is wearing herself thin keeping all these balls in the air. Eventually she knows she's going to break down completely. Maybe that's why she puts together the shrine to Phantom in her locker, so if she acts weird people won't suspect that when she's out buying make up she slips bottles of pills into her purse.

She can't save herself. Paulina knows how the world works. She might be able to make it at her dream school as the token Latina or the token lesbian, but she'll never be accepted as both. Her family is too Catholic to accept anything other than marriage and children. Dash, though, his family is just his dad, his mother died when he was a baby and he is free, completely free when he leaves Amity Park to pursue his crazy dreams. As much as it probably won't work out, he's got the right image that he might be able to garner public support: white, blonde, blue eyed, an all-American boy from a decent sized town with a bad home life who'd overcome that via sports. The media would eat him up. He's on the right track to being one of those people who make LGBT history while she's looking at train tracks wondering if it hurts for long or if it's all over in a flash.

Paulina keeps up appearances as if she were a spy doing covert ops, going to parties, smuggling alcohol home to pair up with her pills while flirting with football players from two schools and discussing their viability as dates with Star afterwards. She sets Star up with a sweet basketball player and wants to cry every time she sees them walk down the hall hand in hand. She will never hold a girl's hand, will never know what it's like to kiss someone wearing peach lip gloss, will never make a girl beam like that before they part for classes. She wants to cry, scream, tear herself apart, rip out her heart like the Aztecs in her History textbooks did and hold it up to prove to her classmates she bleeds too, she hurts, she is spiraling down like anyone else, she's human like anyone else.

Her concealer hides any signs she cries at night, her foundation covers any imperfections, her perfume keeps the other girls envious as boys tell her she smells good. She is silk hiding steel, strong enough to last for as long as it takes to get Dash out of her. It's too late for her, or maybe more accurately she just never had a chance of making it, but if it takes everything she has she will make sure her truest friend survives the high school experience. She may not be in love with him, yet she loves him deeply, defends him with snide remarks and put-downs to people who she even thinks might be close to realizing Dash gets needlessly physical with the boys he beats up. She flips her wavy and well conditioned hair to get attention then, as all eyes are on her cherry-red lips, shoots people down as if they're all beneath her. She picks on all the right people like she's just some rich bitch, a term Sam of all people coined for her, and she likes it. The moniker is cold, hollow, lacking in humanity. It's exactly how Paulina feels at night when she counts out her stash of pills and alcohol as if somehow they might have depleted since the last time she did so.

One day she isn't going to have Dash to think of anymore. One day he's going to be out and that'll leave everyone looking at her with suspicious eyes. Her parents will be the first to turn on her. Her mother is always monitoring her for behaviors that aren't ladylike, which is code for the truth she's onto, and Paulina knows that eventually, she's going to run out of cosmetics and clothes to hide behind, that she isn't going to be able to go out shopping as if everything is fine when she feels like the world is trying to swallow her whole forever. For now, though, she has a task to complete, which is enough, just barely, to keep her going. She doubts anyone will miss her when she's gone. She is easily replaceable by any other girl who's into fashion and cheerleading. Some people may even be glad to see her go, like Sam and Valerie. If Paulina were honest, she'd have to admit she's looking forward to the end of this nonstop charade, too.

As Sam once put it, Paulina is shallower than a puddle, and that's not a life even Paulina really wants to keep living. She doesn't even want to try when every day she feels as if there's less and less to her.

When she does die, there won't even be enough left of her to leave a ghost behind.


End file.
